


holding on to hope to save my days

by atlantisairlock



Category: Charlie's Angels (2019), Charlie's Angels (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Bruises, Bullying, F/F, Minor Violence, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21603751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Bosley grows up with no bruises; Elena grows up with bruises on practically every inch of her skin.Soulmate AU where, when your soulmate gets injured, you get a bruise in the same area of your body.
Relationships: Elena Houghlin/Rebekah Bosley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 257





	holding on to hope to save my days

**Author's Note:**

> once more for the discord pals, **ura_nium** in particular, my chief enabler... 
> 
> the bosley that recruits rebekah isn't based on any existing character from the series or the 2000s movies. i just imagine her with sarah shahi's face because I Do What I Want.
> 
> title from 'fall back into my life' by amber pacific.

When Rebekah is three years old, she’s playing with her mother in the living room when her mother suddenly makes a face and clutches her forearm. Her forehead creases less with pain and more with concern, and after a minute or so she lifts her hand from her arm and evaluates the bruise-purple stain that spills across her skin. She meets Rebekah’s eyes with a rueful laugh. “Looks like Daddy bumped into something at work again.”

“How do you know?” Rebekah asks, wide-eyed, curiously poking at the bruise on her mother’s arm. Her mother laughs and pulls her in with an arm around her shoulders. “I suppose it’s time we told you about soulmates, then.”

Her mother explains, in terms as simple as possible, that everyone has a soulmate - a person to call their own, to end up with, a perfect match. That soulmates remain connected for their entire lives through the bruises.

“Legend says that we were created that way, linked by our pain, to teach us what it truly means to love,” says her mother. “Before they even meet and spend the rest of their lives together, soulmates already share each other’s pain. And that’s what it means to make a commitment to each other.”

Rebekah peers at her own skin, frowning. “I don’t have bruises, Mama.”

Her mother laughs and smooths a hand over her hair. “You’re still young, sweetie. And so far you’ve been a rather careful child - I don’t think you’ve ever been injured either. Your soulmate probably doesn’t have any bruises either. Give it time, baby. You might have to wait. Daddy and I waited thirty years to meet, too. But it was worth it. It always is.”

Her father comes home later that night after his shift at work, sweeps her mother into a kiss and chuckles over their shared bruises. He swings Rebekah into his arms and reads her a bedtime story, and she falls asleep thinking _I want that too._ She looks at her unmarred skin and hopes she’ll wake up to something, _anything,_ proving the existence of that someone meant just for her.

Rebekah grows up. She turns six, seven, eight, and still she never sees a bruise appear but for her own injuries. Her mother stops smiling at her indulgently and starts fretting to her father, both of them speaking in hushed whispers under the kitchen light when they think she’s in bed.

“It’s not completely unheard of,” says the soulmate counsellor her parents take her to consult. “Her soulmate might just be particularly careful. And age gaps do exist, although, to be fair, usually not to such an extent.” He pauses and glances Rebekah’s way, looking as if he’s debating whether or not to say the next sentence in her vicinity. “And, well, these cases are very rare, but… it is possible that her soulmate is no longer living. Or - and this is even rarer, please don’t immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion - we have had a handful of cases where people just… don’t have soulmates. The bruises never show up, for as long as they live.”

Her father starts a heated argument with the counsellor and Rebekah sits quietly in her chair, fists clenched tight against her thighs. She’s eight years old and her friends in school proudly show off their bruises every day and make up fanciful stories about how they happened and what their soulmates are going to be like. She’s eight years old and still wakes up every day with nothing.

She leaves elementary school and goes up to middle school and still, as always, nothing.

People snicker behind their hands in the hallways, glancing her way with ugly things spilling off their tongues. One boy corners her in the classroom one day and punches her arm so hard she nearly stumbles back. “Fucking freak,” he yells mockingly. “Rebekah the weird little _shit_ , doesn't have a _soulmate_ because she doesn't _deserve_ one.”

Rebekah looks at the splotch of purple under his right eye, the way he brushes it with his fingers, proud and almost reverent, and thinks that maybe, if people like that deserve soulmates and she doesn’t, then the whole thing is bullshit anyway.

She punches him under the left eye so he can match. He falls to the ground wailing his lungs out and Rebekah gets taken to the principal’s office to answer for her actions.

“He called me a _fucking freak_ because I don’t have bruises,” she says, when her parents arrive. Her mother lets out a soft, strangled sound and she sees her father’s eyes blaze with anger, pushing out of his seat to go right in the principal’s face. “Is that true?”

The principal swallows nervously, tapping his pen. “Ah, well, sir, you must understand that students are not permitted to react with physical violence, even if - “

“And they are permitted to _bully,_ then?” He stares the principal down, unflinching, and reaches out a hand for Rebekah. “We are taking our daughter home, and we will be speaking to you, and the board of directors, about how this school allows children to be _harrassed_ despite the so-called zero tolerance policy.” His tone is absolutely grim. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go.”

They take her home and sit her down at the dining table and they all eat chocolate for dinner. Her mother hugs her tight and whispers that she’s sorry and that she’s proud of her.

“I want you to remember this,” her father says, hands on her shoulders, looking right into her eyes. “Those kids don’t know what they’re talking about, and you shouldn’t bother stooping to their level. You are smart, and driven, and tenacious, and the presence or absence of your soulmate doesn’t change that one iota. You are more than your soulmate, Rebekah, and you always will be, even if they do eventually turn up on your skin. Just like how your mother and I have value and individuality as our own people, not just as soulmates. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Rebekah says, and she means it, but only as much as she can with her body clean of marks and a bruise visible on her father’s shoulder.

She tries to believe it more, she really does.

But her parents are blissfully happy together, and every other person she walks by in the halls of her middle and high schools seems to have discoloured stains on their skin. The jealousy and longing curls up tight at the base of her sternum whenever she sees them, however hard she tries to push it away.

Eventually, she smartens up - takes that anger and envy and throws it into her work. She tops her class in every single assignment, staying up late into the night to pore over her textbooks. She goes in for sports, becoming the captain of the shooting team and playing on the baseball team and becoming one of the first batch of girls on the wrestling team. She juggles volunteer work and academics and extracurriculars and her own interests and familial commitments and never slips for a moment. She will be the best that she can be or die trying. She will be complete on her own. She will work and work until she can convince herself that it’s enough.

In her junior year, there’s a mass shooting at a supermarket. Her mother is out for groceries and never comes back. Rebekah spends most of the funeral crying into her father’s shoulder while he strokes her back and tells her they’re going to be all right.

He’s there alone when she graduates from high school as her batch’s valedictorian. He looks like he’s aged ten years in between her junior and senior year, and like her, his skin remains free of any bruising whatsoever. He kisses her forehead and takes her out for a fancy dinner and tells her he’s so proud of her, and her mother would be too.

She applies to Harvard, and goes home every weekend without fail to be with her father. They’re all each other has left in the world, and she won’t leave him alone, not for anything.

Two months after she enters university, she returns for another weekend visit. At two in the morning she’s abruptly awoken by loud noises from downstairs. She arms herself with one of her baseball bats from high school and sneaks down the stairs.

She doesn’t remember much from that night. Much, much later in her life, when she's made a permanent move to Europe and left America behind, Saint tells her it’s normal for the brain to suppress traumatic memories, and that he can help her work through it. In that moment, all she recalls is a shadowy figure in her living room, her father lying unmoving on the tiled floor.

Later, when she’s in a hospital with a blanket around her shoulders, a police officer tells her that her neighbour called for the cops after hearing screams from next door. They found the home invader curled up on the ground trying to defend himself from Rebekah, having taken so many blows from her bat that he had two teeth knocked out. They tell her she was screaming, and she didn’t stop screaming until they got her medical help.

“Where’s my dad?” She rasps in response, and doesn’t miss how the nurse attending to her hesitates. The officer inhales sharply, moving in to squat by her side. “I’m so sorry, Rebekah.”

She shakes her head, even though she already knows, and she doesn’t realise she’s sobbing, hysterically, until the nurse starts trying to calm her down. “Where’s my dad? _Where’s my dad?”_

_I’m so sorry._

And then he’s gone too.

After they bury him, she stays at the cemetery until the sun sets, just looking at the pair of headstones with years of death so close to each other, far too close.

When she finally, finally gets up to leave, she turns and walks right into a woman wearing a dark suit and looking at her with neutral interest. “Rebekah?”

Rebekah takes a step back, heart racing, already ready to go into fight mode. “Who are you?”

The woman reaches out, holding a black card in her hand. The surface glitters with gold in a geometric pattern. “Someone who wants to make you an offer.”

“I don’t want anything,” she snaps. Unless this woman can bring her parents back to life, Rebekah doesn’t want it.

The woman doesn’t retract the card, and her voice doesn’t waver. “You were valedictorian of your class and are currently at Harvard, offering a double major in law and politics. You were elected captain of your school’s shooting team and took back gold medals for every single competition you participated in. Your mother died two years ago in a mass shooting - ”

Rebekah lunges at her before she can think about it, and the woman’s hand snaps up to grab her wrist before she can punch her in the face. “Shut up, shut the _fuck_ up - how do you know all that? Who the fuck are you?”

“You’re smart, courageous and dedicated to doing good,” the woman says, with more steel in her voice now. “You could do so much more than just practice criminal law in some stuffy firm in New York.”

Rebekah stares at her, wary and confused and very ready to run. “Who _are you?”_

The woman smiles and finally deigns to answer. “I’m Bosley, and I’m from the Townsend Agency. And I think we can give you a place where you would thrive.”

She celebrates her twentieth birthday in the middle of Angel training, lying in wait on top of a hill with a Townsend-modified sniper rifle, keeping an eye out for the fellow four recruits she’s in training with. She won the right to the sniper rifle in yesterday’s bout, and everyone else was stuck with handguns. Now she’s got to tranq the rest of her cohort before they tranq her. Piece of cake.

Movement from below, and Rebekah gets her sights on Victoria, creeping through the underbrush. With a grin, she aims her gun, finger tightening on the trigger.

That’s when a sharp sting twinges in both her knees at once. She’s not some soft-palmed novice and she still makes the shot, but it doesn’t hit Victoria clean in the neck like she wanted. She’s lucky the tranquilisers are fast-acting, or she’d have time to pull it out of her arm. Rebekah curses and wonders what the hell that was.

It doesn’t happen again, and she succeeds in knocking everyone out and returns back to HQ triumphant and pleased, one step closer to becoming a full-fledged Angel. Her Bosley looks through her report with a pleased smile. “Well done, Rebekah. Get some rest, you deserve it.” She watches with her arms folded as Rebekah changes out into casual wear. “How are you celebrating your birthday?”

Rebekah shrugs, lips set in a tight line. “I’m not.”

“Why not? Twenty is big, you know.”

“I’m all alone in the world. There’s no point thinking about stuff like that.” It’s true. It’s never going to stop being true - her parents dead, no friends to speak of, her soulmate either dead or non-existent. She’s long given up on that. She’s on her own, with nothing to tie her down anywhere, to anything. It’ll make her an excellent Angel, and she already knows it.

She doesn’t expect Bosley to snort in derision. “What nonsense. You're not _alone_ \- you have your soulmate, don’t you?”

It’s stupid, how much that hurts, aching in her chest, even after all this time, even after growing up and coming to terms with being enough as herself, without a soulmate by her side until the end of her days. She clenches her jaw and looks away. “I don’t have a soulmate.”

There’s a long pause, long enough to make Rebekah concerned. When she turns back, Bosley looks completely bewildered. “Rebekah, what are you talking about?”

The tears prick her eyes, the fury rising inside her, something she’s tried so hard to contain for most of her life, and Bosley _knows_ her history, knows everything about her, knows what brought her here, so why is she saying all this? Is this another test, of how well Rebekah can contain her grief and her rage? Because she’s definitely failing. “I don’t have a fucking soulmate, okay? Didn’t Charlie’s files on me tell you that? I’ve never had a bruise for twenty years, not a single one, and I know it, okay, I know it. I don’t have a soulmate. It doesn’t matter. I’m alone and it’s fine, it’s _fine._ It doesn’t affect how good an Angel I’m going to be, and I’m going to be fucking excellent.”

Silence. Rebekah doesn’t move, trying very hard to make sure her tears don’t fall. Bosley takes a few steps over and stands right in front of her. “First of all, Charlie doesn’t include soulmate information in your files, because that’s a dick move,” she says quietly, and then points at Rebekah’s legs. “Rebekah, your knees are bruised.”

It’s like she’s frozen to the spot. Rebekah slowly, slowly looks down, and it feels like she’s somewhere else, watching her body do it, without control of her own movements. Bosley’s right. There are two bruises on her knees, small but unmistakable in their colour and shape. She puts pressure on one, and they don’t hurt. She didn't get these in training. They’re not hers.

They’re not hers.

Somehow she ends up crouched on the floor sobbing, with Bosley’s arms around her, quietly shushing her. She doesn’t know how she gets there. All she can think of, all she can see, are the twin bruises on her skin, so many years after she started hoping, waiting, looking out for them.

“I have a soulmate,” she whispers, hiccuping and feeling stupid for it but not being able to stop, and things are finally beginning to fall into place, to click - her soulmate is probably a _kid._ Her soulmate is probably miles younger than she is, wasn’t born until recently, and that’s why she’s never seen a bruise on her body, not until now - they’re not dead or non-existent, they just weren’t here yet, not for her, but now, now, _finally -_

She shudders, her voice trembling, but the words sure and true. “I’m not - I’m not alone.”

“No,” Bosley agrees. “And Rebekah? You never will be again.”

— — —

When Elena is three years old, she’s running to get a snack from her father in the kitchen and trips and falls right on her knees. She doesn’t bleed, but it hurts enough that she starts wailing and doesn’t stop until her father plies her with two cookies and lots of soothing.

“Poor thing,” her mother coos, patting her head as her cries turn to sniffles. “That’s your first bruise that’s yours, isn’t it?”

Her father nudges her mother in the side, looking disapproving. Her mother sighs and falls silent, and leans against his shoulder. They both distract Elena from the pain with promises of more cookies and gentle words, but she remembers.

Her parents explain the concept of soulmates to her in kindergarten, but she hasn't yet reached a point where she really understands what it means to have so many. She spends most - no, _all_ \- of her early childhood covered with bruises that aren’t hers. When she’s five she feels that familiar sting on her chest and when she looks down into her shirt there’s a massive bruise spreading across her front, and Elena runs out to her parents crying, scared for reasons she doesn’t completely comprehend.

“Is my angel dying?” She asks, lip trembling, and her parents can only stare at the bruise and stay quiet. Elena cries herself to sleep, and none of them rest easy until the bruise starts to heal over and other ones appear in their place. Her soulmate is hurting, but they are alive, and that's the only comfort she can take. 

Her parents look at all the colour blooming across her skin, over and over, and can only come to one conclusion.

“You know we can’t do anything,” her mother says, one night when they’re talking in the living room and Elena’s in her bedroom listening through her open door. She sounds despondent and terribly resigned to it. “Nobody can know who her soulmate is, not until she meets them.”

Her father sighs. “I know. I just - hate the thought that we _know_ another child is being _abused_ and we can’t do _anything_ about it and just hope someone will intervene.”

She’s happy, healthy, completely carefree, doesn’t understand what that could possibly mean. When she asks her parents matter-of-factly what _abuse_ means they go pale. All she comprehends, in her youth, is that she has somebody meant for her and her alone, and they are always in pain.

“What can I do?” She asks, because that’s what her parents have taught her to be the most important thing in the world - to help. Her father’s face falls and he kisses her forehead, squeezing her hand. “Sometimes there’s nothing we can do,” he says softly.

“There’s always something,” she protests, feeling upset. “That’s what you always say!”

Her mother strokes her hair and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, baby girl. Not this time.”

She’s ten years old and she goes to school every day with bruises she doesn’t earn, long having gotten used to them. Older now, wiser now, it hurts every time she sees a new one appear. She wonders what her soulmate’s life is like, why and how someone could hurt them so badly. She learns in school that soulmates can die before they meet, and even at her young age it feels like she lives with that hanging over her head, her whole life.

She touches the new bruises as they appear, sending out a prayer to whoever might be listening. _Don’t die. Don’t leave me here alone._

It’s almost like a benediction when they appear, again and again. They’re marks of pain, of suffering, but they also prove that truth - they’re alive.

She gets caught up in school, in her own work - Elena shows an aptitude towards STEM, programming in particular, and her parents sign her up for all the extracurriculars and enrichment courses she wants. She’s so focused on her world and already so used to her bruises that it’s a while before she starts realising, right before she starts her senior year, that they’re not appearing as much any more.

It’s a good thing - her parents look so terribly relieved, positing that her soulmate’s finally been taken away from their abuser, or they’ve grown up enough to fight back, or to leave. She’s glad, too, hates knowing they were getting hurt, but she won’t lie - she misses them, sometimes. She knows it’s selfish, but the bruises represented that surety of her soulmate’s existence. Knowing and not seeing that proof is just a little different.

She pushes that away as best as she can. The bruises meant her soulmate was in pain - she refuses to wish for them to remain. She’s better than that. She wants to be better - she wants to eventually be worthy to be with her soulmate, good enough for them, for the rest of their lives.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says softly, touching the last fading bruise on her thigh, the last one that remains before they get rarer and rarer. “I’ll see you soon.”

People say it’s hard to wait for their soulmates, sometimes, especially the ones who spend almost their whole lives looking, but it’s different for her. Work consumes her - MIT is not smooth sailing, especially not for someone trying to be the best of the best. She has faith that her soulmate will appear when the time is right, and she’s still working on herself. She’s not ready for forever yet - there’s so much else she needs to do.

She graduates, top of her class, returns to Europe, and applies to Brock Industries over in Germany - they’re doing cutting-edge work, _good_ work, work that she believes in, that she wants to be a part of. Her parents remain in England and make her promise to keep in touch, stay safe, and visit at least once a year. She promises, and then goes to make her life on her own.

They put her to work on Calisto. It’s been in the making for four years and it’s way over the estimated time it should have been finished. She holds a prototype in her hands, studies the way it ticks, and then gets it working, for real, within her first three months. Her colleagues call her a genius, and she waves the praise away, because there’s still so much work that needs to be done.

They get approved for testing. Julio gets hit and ends up in hospital. She scrambles to figure out what went wrong and why, collects data, evidence, files a report. Nothing happens, and then suddenly Fleming is telling her they are going to market.

Elena listens to him jabber on during the speech to Brock, and thinks of the bruises she wore every day of her childhood, the implicit understanding of her soulmate’s existence through the pain they suffered. She’s known, almost her whole life, that soulmates _know_ when their other half dies by unnatural means, because they feel that wound and most of the time, it’s pretty easy to figure out if it was fatal for the other or not. Calisto would steal someone’s life away and their soulmate might never know until it was far too late.

She can’t let that happen.

Ingrid gives her a card with the name of an organisation on it, one she’s never heard of. Elena does some Googling, and then writes an email.

She expects to have to lie low, leave the country, maybe change her name. Whistleblower stuff. She most certainly does _not_ anticipate being shoved into a car by her contact and having to duck and hide from someone trying to shoot them and then nearly drowning in the Alster.

She’s puking her guts out the first time she ever meets Bosley, who gets her into a safehouse and figures out their plan of action at Brock Industries. Bosley is sharp, witty, and undeniably beautiful. Elena’s never dated anyone, was always teased for subscribing to the traditional school of thought about saving oneself for one’s soulmate, but she’s honestly just never met anyone that wasn’t her soulmate who was worth her time.

But Bosley sweeps into her life, violently and dramatically as the rest of the whole saga, and gets her attention from the beginning. Makes her feel like she could be worth spending her time on until life finally brings her soulmate into her path. It’s the first time she’s ever felt that way, and… it’s nice.

The night before the Derby, after the briefing and Bosley’s reassurance that Elena is coming along with them, they sit together in the hotel lobby just enjoying some tea. Bosley taps away at her tablet and Elena looks up from reading a newspaper. “Bosley?”

“Mm?”

“How long have you… been a Bosley?”

“About five years. I’m considered pretty new, but they figured my fifteen years as an Angel made up for it,” Bosley says. “Edgar was a Bosley for thirteen.” She exhales, a soft, regretful sigh. “Should have been one for a lot longer.”

Elena looks down at her skin, free from bruises, and wonders if Edgar had a soulmate who felt a sting in their neck when he was shot. Wonders who he left behind. She wonders what it’d be like, to finally meet hers and fall in love with them and then lose them. She’s not sure if she could bear that.

She sneaks a glance at Bosley, who’s returned her attention to her work, and feels her heart skip. It’s only been a couple days, barely a week, but… the thought of losing her, and Jane and Sabina… she doesn’t want to imagine it. It feels like Jane and Sabina are the older sisters she never had, and Bosley…

That’s less clear-cut, but there’ll be time to think about it when they’re out of here.

She doesn’t get the time. Sabina suggests Bosley is a traitor and Elena feels her heart ache and then she gets a call and their hotel blows up. She staggers out onto the road, head spinning, only to hear Bosley’s voice yelling at her to _stay down, stay down,_ and then, right in front of her eyes, someone from behind her shoots her twice and she falls.

And Elena feels it - two sharp stings on her own chest, analogous to where Bosley gets hit. She knows that feeling. She knows it because she spent eighteen fucking years feeling it on every inch of her skin, places she never thought you could get injured under normal circumstances, feeling it _every damn day_ -

_I’m forty and single -_

_A Bosley for five years -_

_Fifteen years as an Angel -_

Elena thinks back on every waking moment of all her twenty-three years and her parents fretting over her poor, beleaguered soulmate, thinking they were being beaten, hating that they couldn’t do anything about it, but what if -

She reaches out for Bosley - for her _soulmate_ \- and this other Bosley drags her away, away from the person she’s been waiting for, all her life, and dimly Elena thinks she’s screaming - _let me go, it’s her, I need to help her, I need -_

The male Bosley looks at her struggling in exasperation, shrugs, says a very perfunctory apology, and then opens a very familiar box of mints.

No new bruises appear in the hours she spends trapped in Brock’s mansion, and Elena spends the time frantic that Bosley didn’t make it. She’s almost in tears when she gets dragged to change out of her clothes and into a blazing red dress that she hates on sight. She spent almost her whole life feeling scared and sad for her soulmate, wanting so badly to meet them, and when she was younger and less worldly-wise, wanting to save them. And hopping from Hamburg to Berlin to Istanbul with Bosley, slowly growing to care for her, fall for her - she’s _supposed_ to have the rest of her days to be in love with her. That was the promise inherent in every bruise she wore growing up. She can’t spend the next fifty years of her life living with the knowledge that she only got one week with her soulmate and Bosley died not knowing Elena was hers. She can’t.

So when she outfoxes John and Sabina saves her and she ends up in the lobby of Brock’s mansion with John well and truly outnumbered, and she sees Bosley standing there alive - that’s the best feeling in the world. John basically surrenders, Sabina punches him in the face, and Bosley turns to her and asks if she wants to train to be an Angel.

Elena doesn’t respond, just closes the distance between them and throws her arms around her. It knocks Bosley back a step, and Jane and Sabina raise their eyebrows. Elena doesn’t care, refuses to let go. This is who she’s been waiting for. Her soulmate. _Hers._

“Whoa, okay,” says Bosley, sounding confused but not pushing her away. “You all right, Elena? What are you doing?”

Elena pulls back, and realises she doesn’t have the words, not after, well, everything that just happened, so she just reaches for Bosley’s hand and presses it against her chest, where the bruises still remain, fading very slowly. “You were shot.”

Bosley stares at her, uncomprehending for a second - but Elena sees it the moment it dawns on her. The bewilderment shifts to shock, then sheer disbelief. “No. That’s not possible… that’s not - it can’t be - “

But she hears the waver in Bosley’s voice, and more than that, the desperate longing for it to be true. There’s more in that than she can understand, right now - but now she knows. Now she gets the rest of her life to understand everything about her soulmate, and love her until the day she dies. Elena spots the faint discolouration around Bosley’s neck and brushes her fingers against the marks, then tilts her head back a little so Bosley can see how her bruises match the ones Hodak gave her with that golden collar. She lets her hand fall and watches, silent, as Bosley traces the bruises on her neck, making Elena shiver. Her lips are parted, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s _you.”_ She says it like a prayer, like it's been on her tongue, ready to fall, for _years_.

“Hi,” Elena replies softly. She can’t find the words adequate enough to reply, not for a moment like this. They’re still standing in the middle of Brock’s mansion and Jane and Sabina have joined the other Angels in cleanup, wisely realising they should give Elena and Bosley some space. Bosley’s grip around her waist tightens, keeping her close. “Finally,” Bosley whispers. “Finally, I - Elena, I, I think I’ve been waiting for you my entire life.”

 _Me too,_ Elena thinks - not just her, right now, but her five year old self thinking her soulmate was dying, her ten year old self really starting to understand what it meant to always be covered with bruises not her own, her eighteen year old self feeling that complicated mix of terror and relief as she watched her bruises starting to fade without being replaced. All twenty-three years of her life, she’s been waiting. Always knowing she had someone to find. Always knowing she wasn’t alone. And now, finally, knowing she never will have to be again.


End file.
